It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience).

It is always pleasant to learn that someone takes an interest in a work which one enjoyed writing.

It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience).

I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem.

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

In the past I have declined to comment on my own work: because, it seems to me, a poem is what it is; because a poem is itself a definition, and to try to redefine it is to be apt to falsify it; and because the author is the person least able to consider his work objectively.

The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.

However, intention needn't enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don't see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others.

One tends to write beyond what's needed.

To change your phrase somewhat, I know that I like an art where disparate elements form an entity.

If nature were a bank, they would have already rescued it.

As a costume designer, I first try to figure out what the character's economic situation is and hit the stores they'd shop.

Back in 2007, I had the opportunity to meet Professor Stephen Hawking through the X PRIZE Foundation. In my first conversation with him I learned that he was passionate about flying into space someday.

I never understood that when I heard people retire - they said they missed being around the guys. I don't have a need to make a play in the ninth inning of a game anymore. But being on the inside and being part of a team is something that you really do value and you really do miss.

I am still moved by passages of Marx: the 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,' for example, where, after the famous line about religion being 'the opium of the people,' he goes on to call it 'the heart of a heartless world.'

E-mail is a whole new way of being friends with people: intimate but not, chatty but not, communicative but not; in short, friends but not. What a breakthrough. How did we ever live without it? I have more to say on this subject, but I have to answer an instant message from someone I almost know.

It's indeed surprising that replacing the elementary particle with a string leads to such a big change in things. I'm tempted to say that it has to do with the fuzziness it introduces.

I have a characteristic since my childhood. I don't like living together with my mother, sister, or friends at my home. I have always preferred to be alone and independent and lived according to that.

There should be a background check every time a firearm is transferred. You shouldn't be able to go to a gun show and buy guns without a background check. There are Internet gun sales, classified ads in the newspapers - and you can buy guns without background checks.

More women than men graduate in media studies. They don't know how to find a fixer; they don't know about weaponry; they don't know where is safe, where is not safe - they just want to prove themselves.

I have to stay in soaps to pay my bills to Kodak.

I am my own Universe, I my own Professor.

The things that I paint are things that I know very well.

What is compelling with 'War Horse' is the jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring craftsmanship in this movie.

If we're going to change the laws, let's change them in ways which makes it easier to catch criminals, and yet at the same time protect the Second Amendment rights of our law-abiding citizens.

Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.

'Rent' opened up my heart, my senses. I was never the same. I hadn't been back in that place in the same way since. 'Hamilton' put me back in that place.

A man can preach no better than he prays.

When I was managing Cream and the Bee Gees at the same time - when they were playing stadiums all over the world - it was very wearing.

I won't sit here and say an Open Source project will do things faster than a closed source, but one of the reasons why is that it sits on a whole lot of things that came before it.

When I looked at it and did my homework on this issue, I concluded that a flat tax is better than a consumption tax.

Fox is notorious for having a very thick skin about taking shots at themselves.

If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.

Sometimes you become friends with the characters you portray.